The Daughters of Danaus Part 78

"Oh, no, no," cried Hadria in dismay, "don't let me begin _already_ to impoverish other lives!"

Valeria remonstrated but Hadria persisted.

"At least I have learnt _that_ lesson," she said. "I should have been a fool if I hadn't, for my life has been a sermon on the text."

Professor Fortescue gave a little frown, as he often did when some painful idea pa.s.sed through his mind.

"It is happening everywhere," said Hadria, "the poor, sterile lives exhaust the strong and full ones. I will not be one of those vampire souls, at least not while I have my senses about me."

Again, the little frown of pain contracted the Professor's brow.

The dusk had invaded the dinner table, but they had not thought of candles. They went straight out to the still garden. Valeria had a fan, with which she vainly tried to overcome the expression of the atmosphere. She was very low-spirited. Hadria looked ill and exhausted.

Little Martha's name was not mentioned. It was too sore a subject.

"I can't bear the idea of leaving you, Hadria, especially when you talk like that. I wish, _how_ I wish, that some way could be found out of this labyrinth. Is this sort of thing to be the end of all the grand new hopes and efforts of women? Is all our force to be killed and overwhelmed in this absurd way?"

"Ah, no, not all, in heaven's name!"

"But if women won't repudiate, in practice, the claims that they hold to be unjust, in theory, how can they hope to escape? We may talk to all eternity, if we don't act."

Hadria shrugged her shoulders.

"Your reasoning is indisputable, but what can one do? There _are_ cases----in short, some things are impossible!"

Valeria was silent. "I have thought, at times, that you might make a better stand," she said at last, clinging still to her theory of the sovereignty of the will.

Hadria did not reply.

The Professor shook his head.

"You know my present conditions," said Hadria, after a silence. "I can't overcome them. But perhaps some one else in my place might overcome them. I confess I don't see how. Do you?"

Valeria hesitated. She made some vague statement about strength of character, and holding on through storm and stress to one's purpose; had not this been the history of all lives worth living?

Hadria agreed, but pressed the practical question. And that Valeria could not answer. She could not bring herself to say that the doctor's warnings ought to be disregarded by Hadria, at the risk of her mother's life. It was not merely a risk, but a practical certainty that any further shock or trouble would be fatal. Valeria was tongue-tied.

"Now do you see why I feel so terrified when anyone proposes to narrow down his existence, even in the smallest particular, for my sake?" asked Hadria. "It is because I see what awful power a human being may acquire of ravaging and of ruling other lives, and I don't want to acquire that power. I see that the tyranny may be perfectly well-intentioned, and indeed scarcely to be called tyranny, for it is but half conscious, yet only the more irresistible for that."

"It is one's own fault if one submits to _conscious_ tyranny," the Professor put in, "and I think tyrant and victim are then much on a par."

"A mere _demand_ can be resisted," Hadria added; "it is _grief_, real grief, however unreasonable, that brings people to their knees. But, oh, may the day hasten, when people shall cease to grieve when others claim their freedom!"

Valeria smiled. "I don't think you are in much danger of grudging liberty to your neighbours, Hadria; so you need not be so frightened of becoming a vampire, as I think you call it."

"Not _now_, but how can one tell what the result of years and years of monotonous existence may be, or the effect of example? How did it happen that my mother came to feel aggrieved if her daughters claimed some right of choice in the ordering of their lives? I suppose it is because _her_ mother felt aggrieved if _she_ ventured to call her soul her own."

Valeria laughed.

"But it is true," said Hadria. "Very few of us, if any, are in the least original as regards our sorrowing. We follow the fas.h.i.+on. We are not so presumptuous as to decide for ourselves what shall afflict us."

"Or what shall transport us with joy," added Valeria, with a shrug.

"Still less perhaps. Tradition says 'Weep, this is the moment,' or 'Rejoice, the hour has come,' and we chant our dirge or kindle our bonfires accordingly. Why, it means a little martyrdom to the occasional sinner who selects his own occasion for sorrow or for joy."

Valeria laughed at the notion of Hadria's being under the dictators.h.i.+p of tradition, or of anything else, as to her emotions.

But Hadria held that everybody was more or less subject to the thraldom.

And the thraldom increased as the mind and the experience narrowed. And as the narrowing process progressed, she said, the exhausting or vampire quality grew and grew.

"I have seen it, I have seen it! Those who have been starved in life, levy a sort of tax on the plenty of others, in the instinctive effort to replenish their own empty treasure-house. Only that is impossible. One can gain no riches in that fas.h.i.+on. One can only reduce one's victim to a beggary like one's own."

Valeria was perturbed.

"The more I see of life, the more bitter a thing it seems to be a woman!

And one of the discouraging features of it is, that women are so ready to oppress each other!"

"Because they have themselves suffered oppression," said the Professor.

"It is a law that we cannot evade; if we are injured, we pay back the injury, whether we will or not, upon our neighbours. If we are blessed, we bless, but if we are cursed, we curse."

"These moral laws, or laws of nature, or whatever one likes to call them, seem to be stern as death!" exclaimed Valeria. "I suppose we are all inheriting the curse that has been laid upon our mothers through so many ages."

"We are not free from the shades of our grandmothers," said Hadria, "only I hope a little (when I have not been to the Vicarage for some time) that we may be less of a hindrance and an obsession to our granddaughters than our grandmothers have been to us."

"Ah! that way lies hope!" cried the Professor.

"I wish, I _wish_ I could believe!" Valeria exclaimed. "But I was born ten years too early for the faith of this generation."

"It is you who have helped to give this generation its faith," said Hadria.

"But have you real hope and real faith, in your heart of hearts? Tell me, Hadria."

Hadria looked startled.

"Ah! I knew it. Women _don't_ really believe that the cloud will lift.

If they really believed what they profess, they would prove it. They would not submit and resign themselves. Oh, why don't you shew what a woman can do, Hadria?"

Hadria gave a faint smile.

She did not speak for some time, and when she did, her words seemed to have no direct reference to Valeria's question.

"I believe that there are thousands and thousands of women whose lives have run on parallel lines with mine."

She recalled a strange and grotesque vision, or waking-dream, that she had dreamt a few nights before: of a vast abyss, black and silent, which had to be filled up to the top with the bodies of women, hurled down to the depths of the pit of darkness, in order that the survivors might, at last, walk over in safety. Human bodies take but little room, and the abyss seemed to swallow them, as some greedy animal its prey. But Hadria knew, in her dream, that some day it would have claimed its last victim, and the surface would be level and solid, so that people would come and go, scarcely remembering that beneath their feet was once a chasm into which throbbing lives had to descend, to darkness and a living death.

Valeria looked anxious and ill at ease. She watched Hadria's face.

She was longing to urge her to leave Craddock Dene, but was deterred by the knowledge of the uselessness of such advice. Hadria could not take it.